Missing dog knows its station

Leia back with the Soper family Matthew, left, Kaleigh, Erana, Jennifer and police officer Richard. Photo / John Stone

The investigative powers of Whangarei policeman Richard Soper weren't enough to locate his beloved Siberian husky for nearly a year until she was located, of all places, outside a police station.

His young family now has "blimmin three dogs" - the just-found husky and two border collies - although the circumstances behind the former's disappearance on September 28, 2013 may never be known.

Mr Soper was at work that day and his wife Erana was tending to their children when she heard her other dog bark before noticing the gate was open.

"I knew straight away [that she was missing]. Everybody here knew who she was. We went on Facebook, Northern Advocate website, 7 Sharp and Campbell Live websites," she said. Mr Soper said there were heaps of possible sightings, including a dead dog near Oakleigh, which he acted upon but they yielded no results.

All their dogs are named after fictional movie characters.

The husky is called Leia and was bought in 2009 when she was eight years old.

The two male and female border collies are Loki and Storm respectively.

"We gave up hope on Leia after a few months. Storm was just miserable and I needed a running buddy so we thought we'd get another one and we bought Loki from Waiuku," Mr Soper said.

Life carried on reasonably well until Wednesday evening when his brother called to say a friend had seen the video of a dog on the social media website Northland Grapevine that looked like Leia.

His reaction: "Yeah it's been a year, no way it's gonna be her."

It wasn't until they viewed the video with a dog loitering around a swamp in Kawakawa that all began "bawling their eyes out".

Mrs Soper recognised a name in the video and contacted a woman in Kawakawa who set off to look for Leia.

That spurred the police officer into action. "I had my jeans, hoodie, gumboots and torch and set off ... I was pretty much set for the night."

Leia was found walking around the Kawakawa Police Station before Mr Soper arrived.

She recognised him straight away. His next challenge is to trim her weight down from 26.5kg to 19kg, her weight a year ago.